


Decisions and Revisions

by aeternamente



Category: Kissing in the Rain (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-05
Updated: 2014-05-05
Packaged: 2018-01-22 02:37:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,956
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1573040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aeternamente/pseuds/aeternamente
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily has her doubts about making her relationship with James public.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decisions and Revisions

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Shipping It, Part II](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/48458) by Yulin Kuang. 
  * Inspired by [Shipping It, Part II](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/48458) by Yulin Kuang. 



"So, um… I was…"

"Yeah?"

"I was thinking about… about things and—"

"Lily, you’re shaking. What’s wrong?"

"How serious do you think we need to be before we go public with our relationship?"

They were sitting on James’s couch, where they often liked to just spend the evening talking, or not talking, or cuddling. Cuddling happened a lot. Sometimes they watched a movie, particularly when one or the other of them was preparing for a role and they needed to do research, but tonight they were just sitting together. Lily had been trying to get up the courage to broach this subject for a while, and in the silence that had settled, she’d finally decided to just have out with it.

"I… don’t—"

"Because it just feels weird, hiding it from everyone, and I’d like to just be able to hold your hand on the street without worrying about it, but then if people know, we’ll be an  _item_ —”

"—as if we weren’t already—"

"I  _know_ , but like seriously. And then what if it doesn’t work out? If everyone knew, then it would just be a million times worse. And I really like you and I’m tired of hiding this but… I don’t know. I mean, trolling people on twitter is one thing, but actually telling people? I don’t know… I guess what I’m trying to say is I don’t know.”

He was silent for several moments after Lily finished speaking, and then, in a completely James-like fashion, he picked up on the thing that made her the most nervous. “You don’t think it will work out?”

"I—I mean—" Lily sputtered, "I don’t  _know_  and that’s the whole  _point_. We don’t really know what it’s like being a couple under public scrutiny, and it just seems like every other day another famous couple is splitting up. I mean the divorce rate in general is really high, but among actors? It’s gotta be like ninety percent.”

"Lily, wait a second. We aren’t even talking about… about…"

"About getting married?"

They exchanged a shy glance, then both looked down.  _That_  conversation was a while off yet, but Lily was starting to get a feeling, a feeling like she was rooting for them to make it. They’d have a lot to make it through, both with being in the public eye and just being themselves, two people trying to make one another a part of their lives, but she wanted it to work, which was maybe why she brought this up. But still… _  
_

"I just… I’m scared."

He hugged her closer. “I know.”

"But I want this to work."

"I know."

There was a long pause. Lily was coming to understand that this meant James was thinking. He didn’t just speak off the top of his head the way Lily was wont to do (or when he did, he tended to make a fool of himself). He preferred to think about things before speaking, sometimes to the point of annoying Lily. Sometimes she wanted him to just  _say_  something. _Anything_. And she would be lying if she said that instinct wasn’t rearing its head now.  _This is an important conversation!_  she restrained herself from saying. _I want to know what you’re thinking!_

But this was an important conversation, and he wanted to be sure he was using the right words.

"I think…" he finally began, "I think that I’m the luckiest person in the world to get to be with you, and I wouldn’t mind if the whole world knew it."

"The whole world  _would_  know it.” Lily injected some sarcasm into the conversation to cover up the way her heart seemed to glow at his words.

"Yes, and I’m saying I wouldn’t mind that."

"But what if we break up?"

James shrugged and furrowed his brow. “Would it be any less true a year from now or five years from now that we  _might_  still break up?”

She couldn’t argue with him.

"Look," James said, seeming to sense her unease. "I’m not about to make a unilateral decision here. We both need to be on board with this, and I’ll wait as long as you need."

Lily sighed. “Yeah I need to think about it some more.” She felt a bit idiotic, since she was the one who started the conversation, and now she was the one chickening out. “I just… I just wanted to talk it out, you know?”

James nodded. “Yeah.”

* * *

Subsequent conversations about “going public” were all very light-hearted and jokey. Mostly familiar territory about trolling the fans, only going a little further now.

One time, when they had ordered in from Lily’s favorite bakery, James said, “Maybe we should just hang around the Coffee Loft holding hands and see how long it takes for someone to notice.”

Lily giggled. “And then when someone starts freaking out, we’re just like, ‘Oh, you didn’t know?’”

Another time, Lily was reading a script and the idea came to her: “I could tweet a picture of like your ear or something. There’s probably some fangirl out there who could recognize you from that.”

She watched over the top of her page as James made what Lily liked to call his awkward turtle face at the idea that footage of him had been scrutinized so closely.

"You guys are dorks," Audrey said from the other end of the room.

James and Lily glared at her.

"…good thing I like dorks?"

They went back to their own activities—Lily to her script, James to compiling a playlist, Audrey to editing her resume.

"Actually that’s not a half-bad idea though…" Audrey said at length.

"What, tweeting random parts of my anatomy?"

"Ewwww no!" She made a face. "I mean, like a scavenger hunt. You know, dropping little clues, see how long it takes for people to pick up on it."

Lily had to admit the idea appealed to her. It didn’t seem as scary and exposing as making a big public announcement, and maybe the fun of trolling the fans would outweigh her jittery unease with the whole situation.

* * *

At some point, random brainstorms settled into concrete plans, and before long, the three of them were getting ready for a trip to the beach.

The plan was… not simple at all. They were counting on the fact that Audrey’s twitter account, while mildly popular (mostly from  _A Tell Tale Vlog’s_  popularity spike surrounding the release of  _Syntax_ ), had nothing on Lily’s and James’s in sheer number of followers. Lily and James would each post an innocuous beach day picture to their twitters, and Audrey would connect the dots with just enough to link the two of them together on the same beach on the same day.

Lily had James take her picture for twitter as she lay back against their blanket, her floppy hat throwing her face into partial shade. It turned out well, and she knew exactly how to caption it. She showed it to James just before she hit ‘tweet,’ and he got that soft look on his face that made her feel compelled to kiss him.

"GROOOOOOOOOOOSS!" Audrey called from across the beach.

"WHAT ARE YOU, TWELVE?" James called back.

"I LOVE YOU! DORK."

The beach day plan was a success. Or it seemed to be. Except the days kept passing and the fans weren’t picking up on it. Maybe they’d hidden the clues too well? Maybe there weren’t enough people following Audrey as well as James and Lily?

Lily was starting to discover that having that buffer of extra time was not as comforting as she had expected it to be. She was constantly on edge, wondering when someone was going to figure it out, when a retweet or a post to tumblr, or even a gossip magazine’s social media page would pick them up and cause a trending explosion. Lily would feel better if it would just  _happen_  already, but it didn’t happen.

One day, Lily was looking through the beach day pictures Audrey had taken, and she paused on one that was taken as Lily and James scaled the steps up from the beach together in the gathering dusk. She looked like she was whispering something to him as he leaned down to listen. There was something about the picture that felt calming, centering,  _right_.

She saved it as her desktop.

A few weeks later, just after Audrey started work on her first feature (James was so proud, it was adorable), Lily was starting to feel like maybe their clever scheme would just end up lost in the depths of their twitter feeds. And maybe she was okay with that. Maybe it wasn’t time yet.

She was reading a script with her computer open in front of her when James came from behind and kissed her cheek. Then noticed the desktop.

"Hey, that’s a really nice picture. We almost look like a real couple."

Lily rolled her eyes. “Ha.” A beat. “Hey, wanna troll the fans some more?”

"Do I ever!"

The tweet was ostensibly about Lily reading a new script, but if anyone cared to notice (and Lily was starting to doubt anyone would, which meant that posting the tweet felt safe), Lily’s computer desktop was in the background, featuring Lily and James in the same outfits as their beach day tweets. It felt more like an inside joke with herself than actual trolling, but Lily was cool with that.

But someone did notice. Moreover, James’s recent tweet about Audrey’s new film must have led that someone to Audrey’s twitter feed, and the three-weeks-buried beach day tweets there.

It was happening, and Lily was terrified.

* * *

"So I guess at this point, people will be expecting an announcement?"

Lily was trying to sound more casual about it than she was… and failing miserably. Her voice  _would_  start shaking without her consent.

James looked up from his computer with concern. “Lily, are you—?”

"No I’m not okay!" she admitted in a rush. "And I know it’s stupid because I agreed to the plan and everything, but I was starting to think people would just never notice it and we’d just go on as usual, and I was getting used to that, and then like an idiot I tested the waters with that tweet, and now everything is happening at once, and I wasn’t prepared for this! I just—I don’t—I’m not—"

Tears were threatening to escape from her eyes. James set his computer aside and gathered her into his arms. “Shh, Lily, it’s okay.” She allowed herself to cry into his chest as he stroked her hair.

"Hey," he said at length. "Why don’t we take a break from technology for a while?"

Lily sniffed and nodded.

* * *

They spend a lot of time walking around the hills that weekend, just the two of them. It’s calming and relaxing and just what Lily needs. Sometimes they talk about random things—the view, their families, the antics of passing squirrels—and sometimes they’re just walking and soaking in the silence, the silence that is at once expansive and intimate, and like no silence Lily has felt before (and she is a connoisseur of silences), but also weirdly familiar, like meeting someone you know will turn out to be a lifelong friend.

During Monday’s walk, they reach a spot with a fantastic view, and they’re just standing there, soaking it in—the trees and the city in the distance and the wind tossing their hair around…

And Lily knows.

She pulls out her phone. “One for the Twitter-sphere?”

James frowns. “Lily, are you sure?”

Lily smiles, and in that smile is all the certainty she’d been lacking all this time.

James grins back. “Okay, let’s do this.”


End file.
